A human finds themselves as a voice within Pinkie's mind, only she's a young filly still on the rock farm. Aching for home, but worried what others might think, this new 'Mena' must maneuver life in Equestria. As much a life they can anyways.

After one of Pinkie's clones wins the paint-watching test, she slowly finds that "being yourself" is never as simple as it sounds. Especially when everypony has a different idea about who you are, and who you should be.

Starlight has victory in her grasp, she will use the spells of time and space to create a new world of her desires come to life... But, as she comes closer to that reality, something from a world beyond will show her fury. Has she brought her end?

The Sun Celebration has arrived. The Nightmare returns. And with the help of some extra friends, Twilight, Tempest, and their fellow students are about to discover just how far the Dark Mare will go to have her revenge...

When Twilight fulfills her destiny and ascends to the throne of Canterlot, everything goes black. Turns out her life is a game, and she won. Now follow Twilight Sparkle as she experiences the shiny appeal of New Game+.

4/16: It was only approved yesterday, and already this story is featured and hot? You guys are the best!

4/17: Second day and still featured! Moved to the top featured spot too! Awesome!

4/18: Still in the top spot? I think people like my story.

4/19: Left the top spot but still featured. It feels amazing to feel so appreciated!

Ought to be interesting :) not enough gamer fics! One thing to point out is how would she know that her stats were higher than an average adult? Is she just assuming that maybe a base number of 100 is average?

9567472Well it will be fun for Twilight as well the "NPCs" in her life have full ability to react outside normal parameters when she acts weird. Also she did ramp up the difficulty so even with her crazy stats boosts the second play won't be a cake walk, enemies are scaled up.

Always liked games with robust New Game +. Disgaea for example during your first run there is an unwinnable fight in about the 5th chapter, replaying battle and just obliterating the "super boss" you couldn't even hurt the first time was fun. Best new game + have the extra difficult bonus areas(which often your not allowed into during first play) or enemy difficulty than scales to the player.

9567545She doesn’t know the baseline, but if there’s one thing Twilight prides herself on it’s her capacity to perform magic, and one of the things she learned through her setting of stat points just prior to her New Game+ birth is that her intelligence stat affects the Arcane Magic mastery, or ARCANE MG stat. She now knows what her intelligence was in a quantifiable form; a number.

With her having been such an exceptional mage in her first life, and knowing that there is a growth link between intelligence and Arcane Magic mastery, the pieces fit together in her mind pretty well that even her intelligence at the end of her first life was high by pony standards. Call her conceited if you wish, but she’s her own only solid reference. Technically speaking, she should be her baseline, but she feels confidant from how much praise she always got from her skill in magic that she broke the mold with intelligence at least.

Just here making sure certain things don’t confuse. MG is short for magic, and the MG stats in the linked data sheet represent a degree of understanding of the corresponding magics. Also, it was very briefly mentioned in the prologue chapter that Twilight experimented with the stat points. She was observing all the numbers as she applied the points one at a time, and discovered that there are a lot of invisible connections between the numbers.

For example, each of the eight stats that sit between DEF and the first MG stat (let’s call them core stats) are linked to one of the MG stats. They line up in the same order for our convenience, and each MG stat is twice the value of its corresponding core stat. Also, Twilight’s ATK and DEF are her STR plus her POW, and twice her POW respectively. Her HP is ten times the sum of her STR and twice her POW, and her MP is ten times the sum of her INT, WIS, and RES.

What Twilight doesn’t know about the core stats is that their linked growth with the MG stats goes both ways, though the way growth in her core stats is affected by her understanding of magic is not so clear cut. Achieving further understanding in a field of magic through study and application will not boost her physical stats. That would be silly, even for a video game. Instead, as her MGs increase, her understanding in that field will lead to greater growths in the linked stat. It’s an ever-increasing upward spiral that honestly all but begs to be abused by those who understand.

That’s not to say the process of reaching further magic understanding itself wouldn’t yield any fruit in her core stats. The effort may well increase her INT, or Intelligence, if the magic growth is achieved through study. If it’s done with practical application, it would increase her WIS, or Wisdon is she’s following the rules like a good schoolfilly would, and it’d increase her CLV, or cleverness, if she instead tests those rules and explores the limits of what the inherent physical, metaphysical, and aetheric laws of magic let her get away with. Also, if she gets hit by her own spell, or is affected by any kind of backlash, her RES, or Resistance will increase if she takes damage.

Speaking of magic laws, the focus of this story is going to be on a form of Alicorn Twilight who will be constantly at her ‘vs. Tirek’ level; that level of power is what I’m calling ‘hyperdrive’, though with her now being born that way it of course doesn’t come at the expense of the other princesses. So with her now in a constant ‘hyperdrive’ state (she didn’t know what it was when she selected it, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have), and with her decision to have fun within reason this time around, she won’t be inhibited by her own anxiety. That in mind, should I take time to define the laws of magic I briefly mentioned earlier? Does anyone feel like it would add to the story if I did?

As a final note, her MGs were all 500 when she saw her new starting stats before applying points. That is not the max. That is the absolute low end of what the game logic considers mastery. Also, her core stats were all listed as 250. This was not done to emulate any kind of programming necessity. Her core stats are not 250 now in order to enable the MG stats to be 500. The mastery buffs had no effect on her core stats. The core stat buffs are the result of ‘hyperdrive’. Unlike the mastery buffs though, the ‘Hyperdrive’ buffs do boost the mastery stats...or they will. Once the Rainboom occurs, her Hyperdrive-buffed stats will incur their mastery boost, which will stack on top of her mastery buffs and whatever increases she’s incurred before then. A filly with four digit magical understanding across the board. Oh boy.

The question I have is, who are her parents? For sure, if they are the same as before, her family never rated being PERSONAL friends with Princess Celestia. And certainly were never close enough to have her present during Twi’s birth.

That she is an alicorn, is, of course, noteworthy. But that would still take more than a little time to fetch her from court.

9567882Thank you for that. I made some additions to the hospital scene that followed the character creation that should clear up how Celestia got there so suddenly. I meant to do it before, but I didn’t realize I had forgot to state that anyone had even decided to notify Celestia. I’m also guessing based on your comment that you thought that first little interaction was between Twilight’s parents? I specified now that it was hospital staff overseeing the delivery.

Great job on the prologue. Yeah, this definitely looks like it could be a downright fun story. ESPECIALLY with the implication that at least A LITTLE of Pinkie has rubbed off on Twilight (enough for her to want to have fun with her second "playthrough"). And, yeah, great touch having the "replay" take place AFTER a possible finale to the current/last season. Of course, with Twi basically being a smarter Flurry Heart in the new playthrough, the comic possibilities are quite high. Hopefully, though, she will ALSO take the opportunity to treat Spike as closer to an equal partner than an overworked underappreciated assistant AND show the ponies in her study group (Moondancer in particular) a lot more regard. And, yeah, it might be great to see her not just helping out Sunburst while he is at Celestia's school, but also convince him to maintain contact with Starlight. Okay, okay, sorry about that. Didn't mean to get off on a ramble.

Anyway, the story definitely has potential and I will very certainly be looking forward to more of this. However, I will ALSO respect the fact that you have your own life and real world priorities have to take top spot.

9567882To be fair, there HAVE been a fair number of fics that suggested that Night Light was a former member of Celestia's guard and Velvet was one of Celestia's students before either her daughter or even Sunset. It's just a reasonably popular fan theory though.

9568978Assuming you’re talking about Twilight’s slip up, certainly didn’t take long, did it? Also assuming that’s what you’re talking about, I wanted to give Twilight something heavy to deal with as a result of her carelessness, especially after the warning about that earlier in the chapter that gave her a slap on the wrist by comparison. The way I’ve written her interaction so far has had little to no caution. She’s so excited that she doesn’t have to deal with her crippling anxiety anymore that she isn’t really thinking things through and she’s being quite spontaneous. She’s never really done anything without thinking it through carefully, and she remembered how well spontaneous action worked out for Rainbow in the past (She thinks she does anyway, she has a bit of ‘Rose-colored glasses syndrome’ regarding her friends right now), so she figured ‘why not’?

9569006Power of an Alicorn? Pfft! Remember ‘Hyperdrive’? I don’t know how well I really explained it, but the base power she’s going to be building on because of her ‘Hyperdrive’ trait is her ‘vs. Tirek’ power. She has the same magic potential as when she had Celestia’s, Luna’s, and Cadence’s magic alongside her own.

9569028Yes, but there will be one challenge for her to overcome fighting it. The hurdle in her own tendencies she’ll have face in order to overcome that challenge is actually the sole reason this encounter even exists.

9569102Mm...roughly 20% boost in stats, 10% boost in aggression, additional skills/attacks, and updated ai logic to allow for tactics such as using the environment and targeting/involving NPCs as a tactic to get past your guard, if we’re using game terms. Not that you’ll see any of their ‘normal mode’ stats,but you’ll be able to paint your own picture when you see the stats in the story.

I like how on Skyrim there is a frost troll on the way to the Greybeards. Frost trolls are so stupid strong I set the difficulty to novice and duel the thing at level 5-8. I don't always win that fight.

9569143hey yeah that frost troll is only there if you are too high a lvl if you go strait there after killing the dragon he dosnt spawn Hehe another one you probably dont know anout is the frost troll that spawns at bleak falls barrows in the cave section if you dick around and ignore the main quest long enough one shows up there too

Excellent job on this latest chapter. LOVED the "scans" on Velvet, Night Light, Shining and Celestia. And, yeah, Celestia DOES have a point about "playing dumb" until Twi is a bit older. AND I got a few good laughs from Twi doing "baby" antics with her more advanced magic AND the "experience points" stuff. And, yeah, with her power, she MIGHT be able to beat that roc (and probably gain enough experience points to go up several levels in the process), but it WON'T be easy.

Actually, it might be kind of neat to see some of her actions result in activating some "DLC chapters" later on. And, if this is a potential "Multi-player", then the rest of the Mane Six might be going through something similar on THEIR ends right now but waiting for the other players to show up.

Anyway, great work on the exchanges, humor and future action set-up in all the right places.

Interesting. I love these 'life is a game' stories and I think this one will be very good! Thank you! Also, if Celestia decides to take Twilight as a student now, she would not have to take the magic school test, meaning she wouldn't hatch Spike and her cutie mark wouldn't appear at the same time as the others.

if they keep this up there gonna start wondering if twilight is the reincarnation of discord...plus heres afun question speaking of the lord of chaos, him and pinkie pie have the ability to break the fourth wall...will they realize whats going on and maybe even function as the games cheat engine pinkie for the fun cheats, like big head modeand discord for the really game breaking shiz like god mode

9570174There will be time skips here and there; I won’t be skipping the entirety of her developmental years in one leap but there will be skips. I didn’t do one right away because I wanted to present an obstacle that required her to use something other than Unicorn magic before she had a chance to get her new mind into that same mindset. In her first life she was born a Unicorn, and thus her Unicorn-centric magic usage can’t really be expected to go away. Here however, she was born an Alicorn. She still has her conscious tendencies from her past life, but her instincts are fresh. The problem is that she’s used to overriding her instincts with cold logic, and when problems happen her first instinct has always been either ‘Friendship’ or ‘destroy it with lasers’. I wanted her to be a more balanced user of Alicorn magic, but I didn’t want her tendency to focus on Unicorn magic to ‘go away offscreen’. At the same time, doing away with that as soon as possible is the best option, because letting her fall back into that comfort zone would let her instincts become Unicorn focused as well. Much better to kill the weed when it’s just poking up then to give it a chance to choke your garden first.

9570188Actually, if you’re referring to how I’m shoehorning vague gaming knowledge into Twilight’s character, how would you suggest I do it instead? Should I go back and rewrite everything to account for a completely ignorant main character?